This invention relates to paper folding machines, particularly to buckle chutes in those machines.
Buckle chutes for paper folding machines are well known. In operation, a sheet of paper is fed by a set of rollers into a chute until the leading edge of the sheet comes into contact with a paper stop, preventing further forward motion even as the rollers continue to feed the trailing edge of the sheet. The buckle chute is narrow enough that no portion of the sheet already in the buckle chute can move in anyway to accommodate the continued forward motion of the trailing edge. As a result the sheet buckles outside the chute into the nip between two further rollers which grab onto and begin pulling the sheet where it is buckled, creating a fold. Several buckle chutes may be arranged in series to create more than one fold.
Often in paper folding machines sheets become jammed in the region of the buckle chute. Previously known solutions have required that the buckle chute either be removed from the folding machine, or that a large portion of the machine attached to a sidewall of the buckle chute be swung open for top access. In view of this, it would be desirable to have rapid and simple access to the interior of the buckle chute in order to remove jammed sheets that does not entail removing the buckle chute from the folding machine, and that allows access to jams from the side of the machine.
It would further be desirable that the folding machine buckle chute have at least one pivotable sidewall held by a movable latch, such that when the latch is locked, at least one sidewall is held firmly in place, and when it is necessary to clear a paper jam, the latch can be released, allowing at least one sidewall to be swung open.